US Secrecy Efforts Hurting Scientific Research

EnlightenmentFan writes "The new, ultra-vague category "sensitive but unclassified" is being used to stop publication of research, according to this NY Times article (Registration required, but it's free). Bruce Alberts (President, National Academy of Sciences), William A. Wulf (President, National Academy of Engineering), and Harvey V. Fineberg (President, Institute of Medicine) made a joint statement after bureaucrats declared a major NAS report on bioterrorism unpublishable."

Comments

Googlefied

[Blackneto]

Googlefied NYT article for the No reg types

Hmm...

[Cyno01]

Bioterrorism Articles? i'm sure you could find some textfiles about it, not to knock textfiles.com or nuthin, but yeah, you could do a lotta damage with a little money and various internet resources /flame> Stop The Terrorists!, Shut Down The Internet!, Think of the Children! /flame>

Science?

[jeramybsmith]

Here are the facts for those who don't want to read all the spin.
There is a _federally financed_ report on bio-terror.
The government doesn't want it published because some someone decided the data may be sensitive/dangerous. (for good reason? for bad reason? we don't know obviously).

There is your dilemma in a nutshell. Is this really a science story? This is a politics story and the person who submitted it had a very misleading lead-in for it. Here is one for you that doesn't imply censorship of private research. "Federal government halts publishing of federally financed report".

Misleading summary

[Ryu2]

According to the NYT article, the report in question WAS eventually published for the public, just without some specific examples of weakensses cited in the agricultural distribution system (that was in a non-public version).